


Everyone wants a battlefield

by brighterthansunshine



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 23:36:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3956173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brighterthansunshine/pseuds/brighterthansunshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they’re 10, Wanda and Pietro crouch on the sidewalk outside their school, watching an ant fry to death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everyone wants a battlefield

When they’re 10, Wanda and Pietro crouch on the sidewalk outside their school, watching an ant fry to death. Papa’s at work, and Mama said she’d be late -- the sudden downpour last night had ruined all her laundry plans. The heat wave renders them languid and lost. Pietro has already sweated right through his bag strap.

It’s not that they hadn’t seen things die before. Wanda’s pet terrapin kicked the bucket when they were 6 (it was a gift for her birthday. Pietro got a toy car, which he broke almost immediately. Okay, fine, a week later. Still.) -- and she’d been very quiet, retreated to her room and wrapped the sheets around her head. Her mother sat with her for a while, rubbing quiet circles across her back. Pietro did the same into the night until Wanda’s breathing evened out, until she fell lax into his sore arm.

After that, he went out to their garden and dug a grave with a spoon. In the morning, the cereal tasted like gravel. They went out to the garden, and Wanda sang a sad song that she’d heard before at one of the funerals down the street, after which, she turned to them and smiled. 

Pietro had trouble writing his essay the next day, so Wanda wrote his. It was terrible, of course -- unfocused and full of lofty ideas. One must always be convincing.

The ant twitches one last time before falling still. Wanda hadn’t looked at Pietro the entire time, but he saw her hand tremble and flex, as if meaning to reach out to it.

‘It’s useless,’ he hears her say, only because he’d been listening so closely. Her features distort into something ugly, frightening. 

That night, Wanda is inconsolable, curling up in the corner of their room and shaking, stilling only ever to tell Pietro that she’s fine, she just --. She just.

Pietro feels like something has changed so irrevocably in her, like the sun had sunk a little lower over the horizon and would never quite rise the same way. He would give anything to know why.

-

When they’re 10, the bombs fall. Wanda watches her mother’s body flung away from them like a rag doll, and father’s still piling wood against them, trying to form a fort for the two of them. Then another bomb takes him too, lets loose after it sputters for a moment. Pietro is hysterical. The third bomb lands, and its shell makes a hollow noise when it hits the ground. Pietro squeezes his eyes so tight he fears he may pass out, bracing for impact, and feels, suddenly, a phantom call of sorrow, so deep and wild that his legs nearly give out beneath him. 

They don’t, but the walls do, and all he remembers before losing consciousness is the tangling of bony fingers with his own.

-

The same day the bomb hit, Pietro had given a presentation in class. The topic was actually something about his home life and the merits of a good government, but he honestly hadn’t given a shit. Also, one kid doing well in the family was probably enough, right? 

So he took a crinkled family photo from that time they all traveled down to the fringes of what used to be the Soviet Union, the four of them, and his father had given them a tour around the area. Father was poorer than most, monetarily, but he had so much knowledge that Pietro and Wanda hardly minded. Although from the way mother always flung her hands up exasperatedly at the new novel he’d brought home after work, she definitely minded. He’d told them about the Berlin wall, how his family moved back and cross along lines that never seemed to stay put. How they’d all thought that the collapse would bring a new era.

Mother had softened then, nodded and tried to hide her own quiet smile.

How they all believed that whatever peace that finally came would last.

‘Father still refuses to buy a gun,’ Pietro had said, with nothing but pride in his voice. They did this at the dinnertable every Friday. ‘Because he wants to let us know that he still believes.’

-

When they finally get pulled out of the wreckage, Pietro (stubborn, angry Pietro) runs back into whatever is left of the house, tries to find something -- anything -- to bring back to Wanda. To father and mother. They must be at the hospital now, they’d want an old sweater. Anchor them to home. And Wanda -- Wanda, lying in the stretcher. She’ll need strength. He has to find it.

For a while it’s nothing -- forks, combs, mirrors. Father’s writings have all been blown to shreds. The photos, too, caked with ash and dust. He puts them into his pocket anyway.

Then his foot snags on something, and he hears a click. The gun goes off suddenly, its bullet threading through the heap of wood before it stops when it meets metal. 

The anger swells and the dam breaks. He collapses into the scatter of wood, pieces of furniture, the broken edge of a photo frame. Beats the ground with a bloodied fist like a madman, bending with a rage he’s never felt so keenly in his life, filling his veins and blinding him. 

The firemen have to drag him out by his thrashing legs, put a needle in him until he blacks out.

-

For a while, Pietro entertains the thought of killing himself. Sometimes it stays for a while, eats into him so he’s nothing but a shell. Sometimes it leaves him alone, and he goes out with Wanda for walks. They eat the shitty hospital food. She takes all his veggies and he takes all her meat, feeds them to the cat that lingers near their windowpane.

He knows why they were relocated to the first floor.

He could never kill himself first. He’d never want to hurt her.

Donations are pouring in for the both of them. People have been injured, hurt, but they were right in the middle of the damage. 5 deaths. 2 were old, one was a little boy, and the other two...

They get a comfortable room. The TV plays cartoons and late-night soap operas. Sometimes Pietro accidentally switches to a news channel and it’s their parents’ blank, bloodied faces being carted away. The newscaster drones on in that tinny voice, _Mr and Mrs Maximoff, victims of the tragedy wrought by..._

He runs to the toilet and retches until he can feel his throat going raw, Wanda’s steady hand drawing circles on his back.

After he’s done, she pulls out a piece of paper from the drawer, starts writing poems or prose or whatever it is to calm herself. The cup of water she’d poured sits neatly on the table. He pulls himself back into bed, draws the sheets over his feet. Leans awkwardly left to avoid pressure on the broken rib.

‘She was wearing her favourite shirt, you know.’

-

Two weeks later, Pietro pulls out the picture from class, them standing in front of a rubble of ruins. The tourist’s hand was shaky and he had no idea how to use their film camera, so his parents’ arms are cut off on either side. Wanda’s hanging off from him like a koala -- he’d shot up in the past year, arms gangly and tired, and she hadn’t caught up yet. She’s pulling his ears, and his face contorts in -- feigned pain, probably.

Possibly real. Wanda's never bothered being gentle with him, at least not in the ways that don't matter.

His parents are laughing.

He holds it for a little too long, doesn’t notice when Wanda comes back from dinner, peers curiously over his shoulder and exhales harshly.

The sound tears right through him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Main title by Richard Siken, sub-title by Tablo.

**Author's Note:**

> Very much extrapolated straight from the movie, so my apologies to all comic book fans!


End file.
